Look out gamers — here comes the Razer Blade. It’s unusually thin at a mere .88 inches, and it’s relatively light at 6.9 pounds, but its claim to fame is those groundbreaking configurable OLED buttons and LCD touchpad that gives mobile gamers a versatile new way to win.
The Razer Blade is due sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, and it’s made by that same company that creates gaming mice that we’ve favorably reviewed, as well as keyboards and other gaming accessories with a certain design flair. In fact, the company wowed us in January at CES with a prototype “Switchblade” laptop whose keyboard did away with conventional keys altogether, instead substituting lots of tiny OLED touchscreens. Yes, Razer has credible design chops.

We haven’t tried this Blade laptop yet, but from what we can see, it has more going for it than just a pretty 17-inch face. It’s powered by a dual-core 2.8GHz second-generation Core i7 2640M processor with 8 gigs of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GT555M 2GB graphics card. Not bad, but on the other hand, there’s no solid-state drive inside — just an old-fashioned 320GB SATA drive. And we’d rather have a quad-core chip like the fastest MacBook Pro’s. See what you think of the specs — check the Razer Blade’s full spec list here.
That’s why we’re scratching our heads, wondering why this laptop is so expensive at $2,799.99. Maybe it’s because of its snazzy new tiny-screen paraphernalia.
Judging from Razor’s pre-sale guff, the screens and their “Switchblade UI” must be expensive to build — they consist of 10 “dynamic adaptive tactile keys” — each a tiny OLED screen — that can be configured according to whatever game you’re playing.
The 480 x 800 LCD panel directly below those keys has two modes: If you’d like to use a separate mouse instead of its touchpad, you can use that mini screen as an extra screen to display in-game info (think weapons). In its second mode, the mini-LCD functions as a multi-touchpad if you like your gaming laptop to be completely self-contained.
While there are plenty of heavier, thicker and faster gaming laptops such as the $1,599 quad-core MSi GT683 we tested (and liked a lot), this Blade breaks new ground with that innovative user interface.
What you think, gamers? Does this one pass muster?
Watch this noisy video for a peek at the Razer Blade’s unique Switchblade UI in action: